


Cancelled the Apocalypse... Now I'm Bored (Gottlieb-Geiszler 100 Themes)

by abelrunner



Category: Pacific Rim (2013)
Genre: Children, Dysfunctional Family, F/M, Family, Friends to Lovers, M/M, Platonic Soulmates, Slice of Life
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2013-09-08
Updated: 2013-09-09
Packaged: 2017-12-26 00:48:05
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,685
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/959602
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/abelrunner/pseuds/abelrunner
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>100 moments from before and after Operation Pitfall in the Gottlieb, and later Gottlieb-Gieszler Family. Includes original characters Rosalind and Alan Gottlieb, and their respective love interests.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Introduction

_**Introduction** _

Newton wasn’t introduced to Vanessa for a couple years, even though there had been plenty of opportunities. Every Christmas, spouses and girlfriends and boyfriends were allowed to come to the Shatterdome. “Conjugal visits”, as Chuck called them. Herc usually gave him a solid smack upside the head for that.

It was about three years after Newt and Hermann were shifted to the Shatterdome in Hong Kong when Hermann finally announced awkwardly to the team (there had been a team then, not just Hermann and Newt) that his wife was going to be visiting, so he may not… be there… as much as he had been. 

The interns giggling and the other scientists kept their faces straight, but Newt wasn’t able to keep the incredulousness inside.

“You’re _married_?” It simply would not compute. Hermann, who dressed in wool sweater vests and frayed jackets. Hermann, who wore bifocals on a chain. Hermann, who was the last person Newt would have ever pegged as being married. Hermann had the gall to look offended, as if he hadn’t carefully cultivated the very look that made the idea of him being married so ridiculous.

“Yes, as a matter of fact I am,” he said. He was looking down his nose at Newt again, which, granted, wasn’t terribly difficult for him to do, given the height difference, but Hermann managed to make it extra condescending. “Not that it’s any of your business.” 

Newt couldn’t think of a good comeback to that, so he just made sure to get a few speckles of blood on Hermann’s chalkboard.

Newt did not go with the other scientists and interns to wait at the launching bay with Hermann. Most of them were only going to ogle his wife, who rumor had it was an English model. Normally Newt would be all for it, but he was still angry at Hermann and had better things to do than show interest in the personal life he clearly wasn’t good enough to know about.

The lab had been essentially deserted for about ten minutes when one of the most gorgeous women Newt had ever seen walked in.

She was dark skinned and dark eyed, with long curly brown hair. She had full lips, a straight nose, and cheekbones like something out of Greek mythology. She was remarkably tall, taller than Newt (not that that was saying much). She was an Amazon in heels, a statuesque goddess in a cashmere sweater and jeans. 

Newt felt his own height intensely as she stood just inside the lab and looked around. Then she smiled and walked straight for him.

“I meant to surprise my husband,” she said conversationally, while a calm, slightly sheepish laugh. “But I guess I tried a bit too hard…” Newt laughed a little.

“Yeah, they’re all down at the launchpad. I guess you, uh…”

“Came in a little earlier. I was in the city for a shoot.” She glanced back at Hermann’s freakishly massive chalkboard, which was half-covered with mathematical hoopla that Newt wasn’t even remotely qualified to try and understand. Math and physics had only been interesting for the first year or so, then it bored him to tears. 

“Well, you can stay here and surprise him,” Newt said helpfully, though he assumed she’d stay even if he said she couldn’t. She had that look about her. “I’m, uh, Newton Geiszler, by the way.” They shook hands; she had a grip. “Doctor Newton Geiszler,” he added as an afterthought. 

“Vanessa Gottlieb,” she replied easily. Newt froze, his hand continuing to shake hers mechanically.

“You’re Hermann’s wife?” he asked, still holding her hand. She raised an eyebrow and glanced between their hands and Newt’s face, still smiling slightly.

“Yes… He didn’t mention me?”

“He did… yesterday.” It finally sunk in that he might be holding Vanessa’s hand, and that might be awkward, so he let go. “He didn’t say much.” Vanessa smiled fondly and glanced back at be chalkboard. 

“Yeah, that sounds like my husband…” she said. She didn’t sound angry or anything, just amused and affectionate. Newt marveled that Hermann was able to marry someone who not only dealt with him being an emotionally constipate ass, but was also a complete stunner.

“He’s mentioned you, though, Dr. Geiszler. Quite a bit.”

“Oh, just call me Newt,” he replied automatically. Then he blinked. “Oh, he has? I… can’t imagine it’s anything good.” He hoped Hermann hadn’t decided to mention how he’d rearranged Hermann’s math problems so that the printout of the end result resembled a giant kaiju emoticon, or how he’d glued Hermann’s food tray to Hermann’s desk so that the physics team had had to break the damn thing to get it off.

“You have to read between the lines, but I think you’d be surprised.” Vanessa replied, which didn’t make a lick of sense. 

“So, what’s he doing?” Vanessa asked, nodding towards the chalkboard. Newt didn’t ask how she knew it was Hermann’s work.

“Uh, something with math…” Newt replied vaguely. Vanessa turned and raised an eyebrow, her smile a little less amused. Newt smiled back awkwardly and tried to recover. “I think it has to do with how the Breach opens and closes. Like… whether it opens as-needed, or on a set pattern.” Vanessa nodded. 

“Sounds interesting.”

“Boring as soup to me, personally, but-”

“Vanessa!” Hermann came in, looking startled and outrageously gaunt in his overly large coat. He glared suspiciously at Newt as his wife kissed him on the cheek. “I hope Dr. Geiszler didn’t give you any trouble?”

“No, no. He was very welcoming. Told me what you were working on and everything.”

“Did he?” Hermann looked alarmed, and then a bit worried, as if he expected Newt to have told her something inaccurate and embarrassing as a joke. Newt would have been offended if he hadn’t done it to an intern fifty times.

“The Breach? Figuring out whether it opens in a pattern or not?”

“Oh. Yes, that’s… exactly right.” Newt scribbled some notes on a piece of paper and tried not to feel too pleased at the gratitude in Hermann’s voice.

“I think we should talk privately,” Vanessa said quietly. Newt glanced up and saw Hermann look rather confused.

“What about?” 

“ _Privately_.” Something about the way she said that made the blood rush to Newt’s ears, and Hermann stuttered.

“O-oh, yes. Private. Right.” Newt laughed under his breath and shook his head.

“Nice meeting you, Vanessa,” he said, looking up and waving and finding Hermann’s ears as red as his. Vanessa grinned and waved back as she walked out of the lab arm in arm with her husband.


	2. Love

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> This started out more generalized, but Alan sort of took over at the end. I guess this does set up the general idea of the family, though?

_**Love** _

Hermann knows how he is. How he acts and looks. But the implication that he cannot, or will not, feel love is offensive.

He loves his family. Sometimes that’s hard, but he still does.

He loves his sweet, silly mother, who has the patience of a saint and who sends him knitted things and German chocolate and letters every Christmas. She sits through the arguments like a reed in a hurricane, bending through the gusts and emerging unharmed. He wishes he could be like that.

He loves his father, despite it all. That’s hard to admit, and he wonders if his father would be able to admit to any love left in the relationship, but he still does. They don’t talk anymore. Every time they try, it ends in disaster, in yelling and door slamming and snarled curses in German. 

He loves Deitrich, with all his casual cruelty and humorlessness. Hermann is like that too, sometimes, so he can’t quite bring himself to hold it against Deitrich. So he doesn’t comment on the snide remarks and the barbs.

He loves Karla, the only sibling who truly looked out for him. They send each other emails and letters, but don’t talk when they meet. They don’t need to. They just sit and sip tea in comfortable silence. 

He loves Bastian, the black sheep without a college degree, his baby brother. He’d run off to be a musician when he was seventeen without a word to anyone, and the only person other than their mother that he kept in touch with was Hermann: little letters written on napkins smeared with engine grease.

He has to love them, because they’re his family. He knows it’s not a requirement, of course. Plenty of people don’t love their families. But he can’t quite bring himself to make the step not to love any of them, not even his father. The love he has for his family is ingrained in his being.

Then, there’s Vanessa.

They met when they were both idiot toddlers eating mud, and learned to love each other. Vanessa called him a weirdo and he thought she had cooties, until Karla told him cooties weren’t real and he needed to stop being stupid. 

Twenty years later, they were married.

They’re not terribly alike. He’s quiet and solitary, she’s comfortable talking to people she’s never met about things he couldn’t even begin to consider appropriate. And it’s not as if her beauty was a deciding factor in their relationship, but there are occasions where it strikes Hermann just how beautiful she is. How confidence and sure, no matter what. He watched her slip on the catwalk once, and she got right back up with a laugh and kept going. Insanity.

He loves her for it.

And when it comes down to it, maybe they’re more alike that you’d think. Because while she might find math atrociously boring, she reads Carl Sagan for fun and quotes Shakespeare and never acts like she thinks Hermann is boring. To the contrary, she listens with rapt attention. 

He massages her feet when she comes home from walking in the most uncomfortable looking heels he’s ever seen, and she massages his scalp after he works on a difficult math equation for five hours straight.

And then there’s Newton.

It takes a long while for him to classify what he feels as “love”, though he supposes it counts as such. The conflicted, strange love that one has for a belligerent child, or a particularly obnoxious younger brother, perhaps. Sometimes, Hermann can’t stand to be around him, but it’s gotten to the point where he simply cannot imagine live without Newton. Ten years will do that, he supposes.

Newton tries to get his own place, at first. But his natural lack of responsibility combines with new issues that begin following the second Drift, and soon Hermann is dragging Newton to their house so often that it’s decided that he’ll move in.

“Why don’t you just stay?” Vanessa asks quietly as Newton curls onto their couch and tries to recover from a migraine. He makes a weak little sound and never leaves.

That’s in May. In April, Rosalind is born. It is not a difficult birth in the least; Vanessa and the infant actually return home the next day.

Rosalind Gottlieb, named after celebrated female scientist Rosalind Franklin (and _not_ Rosalind Lutece, no matter how many times Newton tries to say so). She looks like her mother, with light brown skin and dark hair and big, dark eyes. She is loud and clingy and intelligent. He cannot help but love her. 

She is his daughter above all else. A daddy’s girl of epic proportions. He leaves for a day and a night to give a lecture in Munich, and comes back to a furious toddler who clings to his leg for the next week and a half. She collects bird bones and funny looking rocks. She organizes tea parties and cajoles Newton into playing dress up with her. Her stuffed animals are named after jaegers and kaiju.

Three years after Rosalind is born, her brother is born. It is the longest night of Hermann’s life.

The labor is long and difficult. It starts fine, but suddenly Hermann is being rushed out of the room as the medical equipment shrieks and the baby’s here but he’s not crying and as Hermann is led back to the waiting room, it sinks in slowly that _the baby was not breathing._

Four days later, Vanessa and Alan are allowed to leave with Hermann, Newt and Rosalind. Alan, after Alan Turing. 

Alan is never as strong as Rosalind. He cries less and spits up more, and Hermann is shocked at how long it takes for the boy to be strong enough to walk. But he does walk, and then he runs, and then he’s stumbling after his sister and falling over and scraping his knee.

He loves Alan, but as the years pass, that love becomes tainted with fear.

Alan is like _him._

And that is terrifying.

Hermann knows how he is. He is prickly and standoffish. He doesn’t make friends easily and he was bullied in school for it. He can’t stand crowds and everything has to be clean. Compromises are hard for him. He is arrogant and unlikeable. He is amazed he has a wife, friends, children.

He thinks back on his father, on the fact that he hasn’t spoken to him in about five years, and feels a dreadful certainty that he cannot raise a son.

He does not _want_ Alan to be like him, so he stands back and watches. He watches Newt go off to catch frogs with Alan and blow up hotdogs in the microwave. He watches Vanessa teach Alan how to cook and bake, because _your father lived off of frozen waffles and canned soup for five years and that’s not happening to my son, no sir._

He does not engage as much as he should. He assumes that it goes without saying that if Vanessa and Newt are proud that he is too, which is wrong. A child will not make that assumption.

He doesn’t realize this until Alan is older.

Rosalind goes to college when Alan is fourteen and she’s seventeen. Alan, who had always been small, goes through a growth spurt and is suddenly six feet, three inches of gangly, angular teenager.

Hermann’s mother comments that he looks more like Hermann every day.

“Oh, don’t say _that…_ ” Alan groans. He’s not joking.

Something flips, or sours. Alan is suddenly bitter, and avoids Hermann at all costs. They don’t argue, but they don’t talk either, and Hermann finds that disturbing.

And familiar.

Alan is accepted into Oxford at seventeen and majors in engineering. The first Christmas is the same as most, except that Alan drinks a bit more than is necessary. Hermann doesn’t feel qualified to chastise him for it.

The next year, Hermann doesn’t see Alan. He and Newton are asked to attend a conference and give a presentation to several world leaders, so they miss Christmas at the Gottlieb residence.

The year after that, Alan tells Hermann that he’s switching majors to biology.

There is something odd in Alan’s eye as he says it. Defiance and… fear. Nervousness. He expects anger, disappointment, a fight. 

Hermann realizes that this might have been what he looked like when he announced he was not going to abandon the jaeger program and support the Wall. He went into the room expecting a fight and being disowned. It had lived up to his expectations. 

Hermann wraps his arms around his son tightly and tells him he’s proud.

For a long moment, Alan’s arms are held out awkwardly, as if he’s not sure what to do with them in this situation.

Is this the first time Hermann’s hugged his son? Told him that he was proud? It shouldn’t be, but he gets the sinking feeling that it might be.

For a long, painful moment, Hermann thinks he might be rejected, and realizes that he’d deserve it, frankly speaking. But then, slowly, Alan hugs back, awkwardly patting at first but then squeezing back tightly.

“Love you, Vati!” Rosalind chirps with a kiss on his cheek before she heads out the door. Alan kisses his mother on the cheek and hugs Newt and then…

“Love you, Dad.” Alan says awkwardly. Hermann smiles and pulls his son into a hug.

“I love you too, Son.”


End file.
